Partners in Love and the Presidency

‘The Obamas’ by Jodi Kantor - Review

By CONNIE SCHULTZ

January 8, 2012

On the evening of Jan. 12 last year, Michelle Obama sat in the front row of a packed memorial service and fixed her eyes on her husband as he took the stage.

The Obamas were at the University of Arizona in Tucson to honor the six people who were killed in shootings that had left Representative Gabrielle Giffords fighting for her life. Jodi Kantor describes Mrs. Obama’s reaction as the president spoke:

“She was following every word, nodding a little, her eyes flickering with his words.” When President Obama described Ms. Giffords opening her eyes for the first time, “Michelle closed her own eyes briefly, pantomiming her husband’s speech a little, showing the relief her husband was expressing. She did that sometimes, acting out the words he was saying during his speeches, as if she could give them some of her animation and help propel his message across.”

By the end of the speech, Ms. Kantor writes: “The expression on Michelle’s face was one of deep satisfaction. He had given the kind of speech she knew he could give. The look on her face said: this is the president I wanted you to be.”

Cue the groans. What kind of journalist presumes to know Michelle Obama’s mind?

In lesser hands “The Obamas” would be an act of astonishing overreach, but Ms. Kantor, who covered the Obamas for The New York Times during the 2008 presidential campaign, and is currently a Washington correspondent for the paper, has earned the voice of authority. A meticulous reporter, Ms. Kantor is attuned to the nuance of small gestures, the import of unspoken truths. She knows that every strong marriage, including the one now in the White House, has its complexities and its disappointments. Ms. Kantor also — and this is a key — has a high regard for women, which is why hers is the first book about the Obama presidency to give Michelle Obama her due. In the process we learn a great deal about the talented and introverted loner who married her, and how his wife has influenced him as a president.

“The Obamas” is full of gossipy tidbits that fuel a narrative about their marriage and how it has shaped the presidency. Public glimpses of their intimacy portray a genuine bond forged by an ambitious man and his equally driven wife. He can be arrogant and self-absorbed, but he strives for her approval. She is his champion and critic, and a fierce guardian of their mutual mission.

Ms. Kantor retires wooden stereotypes of the political wife as a prop or a problem and instead explores what it means to be a modern first lady, one with her own opinions and an expectation that she will be heard. The book offers concrete examples of how Mrs. Obama, even as she wrestled with self-doubt, bolstered her husband as only a wife can and kept him grounded in ways that had nothing to do with the tired story of her ordering him to pick up his dirty socks.

She helped him recalibrate when his public approval rating tanked, urging him to alter wonky speeches with personal stories that could close the distance between cool-headed him and a suffering public. She also was the driving force behind an eventual staff shake-up that led to the departure of senior advisers after Scott Brown won Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts. Mr. Brown’s victory cost the Democrats their supermajority, and Mrs. Obama was furious with the president, and his staff, whom she saw as insular and disorganized, and failing to prepare for the worst possible outcomes.

“She feels as if our rudder isn’t set right,” Mr. Obama told aides. Eventually he agreed.

“This was Michelle’s most profound influence on the Obama presidency,” Ms. Kantor writes, “the sense of purpose she shared with her husband, the force of her worldview, her passionate beliefs about access, opportunity, and fairness; her readiness to do what was unpopular and pay political costs. Every day, he met with advisers who emphasized the practical realities of Washington, who reminded him of poll numbers; he spent his nights with Michelle, who talked about moral imperatives, aides said, who reminded him again and again that they were there to do good, to avoid being distracted by political noise, to be bold.”

Sometimes they were too much alike. They shared a disdain for Congress, which crippled Mr. Obama’s ability to broker deals. They clung to old friendships, which further isolated them in a town they already distrusted. They also shared a relentless belief that the president was misunderstood and underappreciated by the people he serves. As the wife of a United States senator, I know this to be a common and all-too-toxic affliction in political families. No good comes of it.

Jodi Kantor

Juliana Sohn

In the immediate days after the 2008 election neither the press nor the president-elect’s staff knew that Mrs. Obama was so apprehensive about moving to Washington that she considered staying behind in Chicago until her daughters finished the school year. When Mr. Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004, Mrs. Obama refused to move her family to the capital to join him. She had little faith in politics as a way to improve lives, and she wanted to insulate her young children from the surreal world of Washington.

I first learned of this in 2006, when Senator Obama was in Ohio campaigning in the Senate race of my husband, Sherrod Brown. When Mr. Obama heard that I too had refused to move to Washington, he sought me out backstage. “You’ve got to meet my wife,” he said, smiling. “She feels about Washington the way you do.” In 2008 I met Mrs. Obama twice and interviewed her once by phone. I have not spoken to her since the 2008 election.

In 2007, after initial reluctance, she gave Mr. Obama her blessing to run for president. The ensuing campaign reinforced her misgivings about political life. She felt stung by negative coverage of her and ill-served at times by an unsupportive staff. She changed her mind about staying in Chicago after Mr. Obama made it clear he needed her, and the girls. Thus began the public transformation of Michelle Obama.

Mrs. Obama struggled with her changed role — in the world at large but also in her family. It was impossible to take her girls to school, or sometimes even attend their soccer matches, without embarrassing them with the accompanying ruckus. She also felt new limitations in her marriage — imposed, not by the president, but by his presidency. An accomplished professional, smart and wickedly funny, she was used to being Mr. Obama’s partner. Now his day was scheduled in five-minute increments, and she was abruptly recast as his helpmate.

She resisted the ceremonial duties expected of first ladies. She loathed the stuffy annual lunches with Congressional spouses, agreeing to attend one only if they joined her the day before to volunteer at a Washington-area food bank. Her good intentions were derailed by media coverage that focused on the $515 sneakers she wore to load groceries.

Clothing had become her “compensatory pleasure” for dutifully enduring the public demands of her husband’s political career, Ms. Kantor writes. “If I have to go, I’m getting a new dress out of it,” she told neighbors.

Now perhaps the most prominent black woman in America, she felt pressure to counter negative stereotypes by telegraphing images of elegance and self-confidence. Instead, she became America’s first fashionista during tough economic times for the country.

Her new image set off repeated bouts of apoplexy among some White House staff members, who weighed in on her choices, albeit indirectly, creating a climate of tension. Ms. Kantor describes a blowup in August 2010 between the White House press secretary at the time, Robert Gibbs, and the Obamas’ close friend and adviser, Valerie Jarrett, in which he screamed an expletive at her. In a condescending tone Ms. Jarrett said, “The first lady would not believe you’re speaking this way.” His response was to curse the first lady too.

Over time the Obamas grew into their new jobs. In the process, Ms. Kantor writes, they have traded roles: “She had entered with her expectations low and then exceeded them; he had entered on top of the world, and had been descending to earth ever since.”

Perhaps they have reached an agreement that, for now, Washington is their town too.